ZEUS: King of the Gods
Zeus...THE Zeus...what's not to love and admire?! Well, a great deal, actually, were one to regard this grandest of deities objectively. While the magnificence of his form and formidability of his powers command our respect, even reverence, many aspects of his complex personality could evoke disgust in all but the most sycophantic of his attendants. Not only was he often so ill-tempered and highly sensitive that he would cast down lethal thunderbolts at the slightest provocation, he also proved to be an incorrigible philanderer and downright miserable husband. Unable to avenge herself on Zeus, himself, his long-suffering wife Hera often resorted to tormenting his unfortunate mistresses. Zeus rarely intervened on their behalf, of course. Having been endowed with perpetual youth, eternal life and undiminishable strength, Zeus perhaps believed he could act with impunity. After all, he was secure in the knowledge that his dominion would go unchallenged and he would reign supreme forever. (By the way, Christmas is next week.)
To record all the stories in which Zeus proved prominent would encompass volumes. We needn't go to the trouble. Zeus has appeared to us many times during our excursions through these rarefied upper reaches. It was Zeus who, having assumed the form of a swan, seduced Leda and sired Helen of Troy. Much later, when Hera, Athena and Aphrodite asked Zeus to decide which of them was entitled to possess the golden apple attached to the label "for the fairest," he refused to adjudicate the matter and referred them to Trojan price Paris. The "judgement of Paris" eventually resulted in Helen's abduction and the Trojan War that soon followed. Zeus sired Persephone, but did not prevent his brother from kidnapping her. He only tried to secure her release in order to propitiate her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Demeter was so distressed at her daughter's absence that the world grew cold and barren. Instead of allowing all mortals to starve -thereby depriving him of worshippers- he commanded Hades to relinquish her back to her mother. Persephone's misery, alone, did not induce him to act on his daughter's behalf.
When Zeus, then still in his early days, impregnated the Titaness Metis, he was deeply worried that the child would overthrow him. As a precaution, he swallowed Metis whole. (We recall that Zeus' father, Cronos, also fearful of usurpation, tried to swallow all of his children. Rhea, their mother, hid the infant Zeus away and then conspired with him to vanquish Cronos and release his siblings.) Soon after swallowing Metis, Zeus experienced an excruciating headache. It was so unbearably painful that he commanded Hephaestus to cleave his head with an axe. As soon as Hephaestus removed the axe from Zeus' skull, Athena, fully grown and completely armor-covered, leapt out of the wound. Athena became the goddess of wisdom, a trait she certainly inherited from her mother.
The foreseeing Rhea, having realized that Zeus would be incapable of fidelity, forbade him to marry. The outraged Zeus threatened to couple with her if she didn't relent. Rhea promptly transformed into a serpent to protect herself from her son, but to no avail. Zeus turned himself into a serpent and followed through with the threat. In so doing, he deprived Rhea of her powers, which enabled him to marry without her permission.
Again, we could recount his exploits all day and still have other stories to tell. Though many might secretly live vicariously through Zeus for he could do as he pleased with impunity, the king of the gods also provides us with a cautionary tale about the dangers of living beyond all constraint. Perhaps it is advantageous for us mortals to suffer consequences for destructive actions, to feel remorse for poor decisions and to even ultimately succumb to death. Life's finiteness makes it invaluable. Then again, if we could live as Zeus for a single day, we might never want to return to Earth.
We'll never know either way.
THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM 207-780-4249 www.usm.maine.edu/planet 70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103 43.6667° N 70.2667° W Altitude: 10 feet below sea level Founded January 1970 Julian Date: 2459199.16 2020-2021: LIX THE DAILY ASTRONOMER Tuesday, December 15, 2020 Remote Planetarium 132: The Sloan Great Wall First, a very rapid review of our previous progression: Earth => Solar System => Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm => Milky Way Galaxy => Local Group of Galaxies => Virgo Supercluster => Laniakea => Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex. We have now advanced to the level of the grandest structures in the observable Universe Today, we explore the Sloan Great Wall .  Located more than 1 billion light years from Earth, the Sloan Great Wall measures nearly 1.4 billion light years in length, equal to about 1/60th the diameter of the observable Universe. The image below shows the "Great Wall" at the left. Notice that the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex appears as a filamentary structure to the right  Once thought to have been the largest single structure in the observable Universe, the Sloan Great Wall now ranks sixth. However, some astronomers believe that the SGW isn't a single coherent structure, but is, instead, three different structures lacking in any gravitational cohesion. Its name derives from the Sloan Digital Survey that J. Richard Gott III, a Princeton University astronomer and his team used to discover the structure in 2003. We are nearing the end of our travels from Earth's sky to the observable Universe. Tomorrow, we'll take the penultimate step in that journey. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Daily Astronomer: |